Category: News

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh risk escalation in 2016 due to Baku’s “sustained military buildup coupled with declining economic conditions in Azerbaijan,” U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on February 9.

“Baku is in full military buildup while the deteriorating economic conditions in Azerbaijan raise the possibility that the conflict escalates in 2016,” warned Clapper.

“Azerbaijan’s aversion to publicly relinquishing its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh proper and Armenia’s reluctance to give up territory it controls will continue to complicate a peaceful resolution,” he said.

Task performance readiness inspection takes place in the Russian military base in Armenia in the course of the Southern MD unannounced combat readiness inspection, the Russian Ministry of Defense reports.

In the course of the inspection, motorized rifle, tank, artillery, air defence and special units are holding tactic, firing and driving control exercises.

The training is held at Kamhud and Alagyaz high-mountainous ranges and Erebuni military airfield. The main task of the inspection is to assess readiness level of the units to perform assigned tasks.

Navodchil-2 and Orlan-10 UAV complexes are used in order to provide control over the units.

The training is taking place at day- and nighttime at the altitude of 800-2,500 meters above the sea level in extreme weather conditions.

30- and 100-kilometer marching with meeting different qualification standards in units will become the final stage of the training.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says he is leaving his post to be named chief of the Constitutional Council, France’s top court making sure that bills are compliant with the Constitution, teh Associated Press reports.

Fabius, 69, was in charge since 2012. His successor is not known yet, as a government reshuffling is expected in the coming days.

During a public event on February 10, USAID announced the launch of the Advanced Science and Partnerships for Integrated Resource Development Project (ASPIRED) – a three-year initiative designed to curb the rate of groundwater abstraction in the Ararat Valley to sustainable levels. USAID Armenia Mission Director Karen Hilliard, Deputy Minister of Nature Protection Simon Papyan, representatives of the central government, regional authorities of Armavir and Ararat provinces, and local and international organizations attended the event.

USAID’s recent assessment of the status of groundwater resources in the Ararat Valley – the country’s key agricultural hub – has indicated an alarming situation. The decreasing level of the groundwater supply and the uncontrolled use of artesian water by fish farms has left some 30 communities in the Ararat and Armavir marzes without reliable access to drinking or irrigation water.

In addition, these water shortages pose a real threat to the country’s agricultural sector, the socio-economic and environmental well-being of these regions, as well as the safety and security of Armenia’s sole nuclear power plant, Metsamor, which relies on these water resources for its cooling system. Despite recent measures by the Armenian government to regulate the use of artesian water in the valley, the situation remains serious and is among the Armenian Government’s top priorities.

USAID’s new ASPIRED project will assist the Government of Armenia in developing consistent policy and technical solutions for a more regulated use of these vital groundwater resources. The project will focus on closing data gaps, improving technical capacities and tools for informed decision-making, increasing access to innovative water conservation and energy efficiency technologies, and promoting regulatory and enforcement mechanisms.

ASPIRED will also conduct an inventory of the wells and springs in the Ararat Artesian Basin, create a publicly accessible integrated data system for the valley, install an automated control system for monitoring groundwater abstraction in ten selected fisheries, and pilot innovative technologies for efficient groundwater and energy use. Policy recommendations will be provided to the Armenian government to optimize fees for underground water use by fisheries and introduce stricter water permit practices and oversight.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will visit Germany February 12-13 to participate in the Munich Security Conference, Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs repots.

Minister Nalbandian is expected to meet with his counterparts from a number of countries and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.

Australia’s peak human rights body has added an avowed holocaust denier to its Racism Stops With Me campaign, writes

Olympic legend Dawn Fraser was intolerant for suggesting that tennis player Nick Kyrgios go back to where his parents came from. Senator Eric Abetz’s referral to US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a “negro” was harmful.

Covering up the murder of a nation, and branding those pursuing its remembrance as motivated by material gain – that’s no problem.

This is the stance of Tim Soutphommasane, Race Discrimination Commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), in embracing the Australian Turkish Advocacy Alliance (ATAA) as an official partner in the Racism. It Stops With Me campaign.

The ATAA is an aggressive denier of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of its Armenian subjects from 1915 to 1923, a campaign that claimed up to 1.5 million lives and also engulfed that empire’s Assyrian and Greek populations.

The stance of the Australian Human Rights Commission is an embarrassment to a growing number of Turks who acknowledge the Armenian genocide, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, co-chairman of the German Greens party Cem Özdemir, the Turkish Human Rights Association and the Peoples’ Democratic Congress of Turkey, whose political wing is the fourth largest party in Turkey’s parliament.

In misrepresenting the Armenian genocide as a ‘debate’ between Armenians and Turks, the ATAA wilfully disregards Raphael Lemkin (the jurist who coined the term ‘genocide’ and spearheaded efforts in outlawing it), the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and 29 national parliaments, including that of Turkey’s First World War allies Germany and Austria.

The ATAA has sponsored speaking tours of notorious genocide deniers. It has praised the Talaat Pasha Committee, an organisation named after one of the twentieth century’s worst mass murderers and deemed “xenophobic and racist” by the European Parliament.

It also accuses Armenian-Australians of having unscrupulous motives – by unduly seeking “land and compensation” – in affirming the genocide, even though that calamity ultimately explains how most Armenian-Australians came to be here.

None of this has stopped Tim Soutphommasane from anointing the ATAA as an anti-racism crusader. His endorsement is all the more strange given unequivocal condemnations of the Armenian genocide by past and present leaders of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), including Tim Wilson, Sev Ozdowski, Marcus Einfeld and Brian Burdekin.

The Turkish community is a valued partner in our fight against racism – Australian Muslims are on the receiving end of some of the worst discrimination in our society. But why choose the ATAA for this purpose?

The ATAA’s denial harms members of Australia’s Armenian, Assyrian and Greek communities, many of whom are descendants of genocide victims and survivors. It renders impossible any healing process for them. And it represents what Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel calls a “double killing”, as it strives to destroy the memory of the victims.

Denial also harms the perpetrators and their descendants. To this day, Turkey struggles in its dealings with minority communities – just ask the Kurds.

Democratic norms there are under constant pressure. Dissidents are liable to two years’ imprisonment if they publicly denigrate “the Turkish Nation”, its parliament, judiciary or military or police forces.

National pride continues to be safeguarded by rehabilitating war criminals like Talaat Pasha (he enjoys an official memorial in Istanbul and has streets named after him throughout Turkey) instead of celebrating the true Turkish heroes of that period, the victims’ rescuers.

Denial harms third parties too. In Australia, our Federal Government vacillates between evasion and silence in dealing with the Armenian genocide, in an effort not to offend the Turks.

Exhibits at the Australian War Memorial omit mention of the Armenian genocide, despite its eruption coinciding with the Gallipoli landings, and Anzac prisoners-of-war witnessing some of the misery to which Armenians were subjected.

Australians have been the poorer for not knowing that our typically generous response to overseas disasters has its origins in our relief efforts for Armenian genocide survivors. This incredible humanitarian campaign lasted some 25 years – between 1915 and 1940 – reaching its peak in the mid 1920s. February 3, 1918 was even declared ‘Armenia Sunday’ across the nation, with churches from every denomination engaged in the fundraising.

These and other neglected parts of Australian history are the subject of the upcoming book by Vicken Babkenian and Peter Stanley, Armenia, Australia and the Great War, published by NewSouth Books.

The Racism. It Stops With Me campaign now counts amongst its partners an organisation peddling genocide denial (the ATAA) and another that valiantly fights Holocaust denial (the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission).

At least you can’t say the AHRC isn’t committed to diversity of opinion.

Meher Grigorian is a director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

IANS – The interior structure of rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars will have interiors very similar to Earth — a thin outer crust, a thick mantle, and a Mars-sized core, researchers have shown using a computer model.

“We wanted to see how Earth-like these rocky planets are. It turns out they are very Earth-like,” said lead author Li Zeng of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA).

Zeng and his team applied a computer model known as the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PREM), which is the standard model for Earth’s interior. They adjusted it to accommodate different masses and compositions, and applied it to six known rocky exoplanets with well-measured masses and physical sizes.

They found that the other planets, despite their differences from Earth, all should have a nickel/iron core containing about 30 percent of the planet’s mass. In comparison, about a third of the Earth’s mass is in its core.

The remainder of each planet would be mantle and crust, just as with Earth, according to a CfA statement.

“We’ve only understood the Earth’s structure for the past hundred years. Now we can calculate the structures of planets orbiting other stars, even though we can’t visit them,” Zeng said.

The model assumes that distant exoplanets have chemical compositions similar to Earth. This is reasonable based on the relevant abundance of key chemical elements like iron, magnesium, silicon, and oxygen in nearby systems.

On February 9, in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians; received Deputy Maya Goykovich, President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and her delegation. She was accompanied by Mr. Eduard Sharmazanov, the Vice President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia.

His Holiness welcomed the guests and noted with satisfaction that due to recipricol visits at high state level, the friendly relations between the two nations are becoming increasingly closer. The Catholicos of All Armenians reflected on the Armenian community established in Serbia since ancient times and the historical Armenian-Serbian ties.

Taking the occasion, His Holiness expressed his appreciation to the Serbian people, for the assistance provided to the Armenians during the disastrous earthquake of 1988.

His Holiness also reflected on the existing warm relations and cooperation between the Armenian Apostolic and Serbian Orthodox Churches.

Deputy Goykovich spoke about the historical past and current cooperation between the two nations. She also stressed the importance of ecumenical relations between the two churches, noting that the church plays an important role in the life of society.

During the meeting, they also spoke about the challenges facing the countries and the support of the churches in overcoming them. In this regard, His Holiness affirmed that the Armenian and Serbian peoples, who profess the same Christian values, have survived all the trials during the centuries with hope and faith, and have realized their wishes and cherished dreams through the spirit of optimism.

His Holiness also conveyed his fraternal greetings to Patriarch Irineos of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Attended the meeting was His Eminence Archbishop Nathan Hovhannisyan, Director of the External Relations and Protocol Department.

Sweden sees the settlement of the Karabakh conflict through peace talks under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström said at a joint press conference with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian.

“This visit provided an opportunity to better understand how you see the resolution of the Karabakh conflict. There is no military solution to the issue. We should do the utmost to prevent escalation,” Mrs. Wallström told reporters in Yerevan.

The Armenian FM said, in turn, that “Azerbaijan believes it can blackmail the Co-Chairs with primitive, provocative statements.”

“It’s strange that they do not learn lessons, because their statements produce the opposite effect. The opinion of the international community is getting more targeted year by year,” he said.

The Armenian Foreign Minister is hopeful Azerbaijan will finally come to understand that this stance gives it no privilege. As for Armenia, it will continue to work jointly with the Minsk Group with a view of reaching an exceptionally peaceful resolution to the Karabakh conflict, since there is no alternative to peace talks.”

Responding to Azerbaijani claims that Armenia wants to keep the status quo, Minister Nalbandian said: “Armenia and the Co-Chairs are interested in changing the status quo. It’s Azerbaijan ignoring the calls of the OSCE Minsk Group to reinstate the commitment to solve the issue in a peaceful way through negotiations. It’s Azerbaijan refusing to create a mechanism of investigation of border incidents. Baku insists that it [the mechanism] will contribute to the maintenance of the status quo.”

At a meeting in Yerevan the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Sweden discussed the opportunities of development of trade and economic, educational and cultural ties, cooperation in the field of healthcare.

The parties agreed upon the improvement of the legal framework and investment promotion. They attached importance to the Convention between the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden for the Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with respect to Taxes on Income and on Capital signed between the two countries.

The sides agreed to continue the high-level political dialogue, hold consultations between two Ministries of Foreign Affairs on a regular basis to further deepen the cooperation. They highlighted the IT sector as an important field of cooperation.

Edward Nalbandian and Margot Wallström touched upon Armenia-EU relations, stressing the importance of negotiations on a new Armenia-EU framework agreement.